Feld Ballet`s `Aurora` A Leap Of Imagination

On any given night in its current engagement at Goodman Theatre, the Feld Ballet is offering more adventure and imagination in dance than many another troupe could muster in a month.

With each progressively more stimulating program, Eliot Feld`s vibrant young company is presenting not only its director`s own inventive works but pieces from other choreographers that complement and heighten their dance-theater talents.

Tuesday`s program, to be repeated Wednesday and Thursday, contained the Chicago premiere of Feld`s mesmerizing two-part ``Aurora,`` the peak of his fascination with contemporary composer Steve Reich. In addition, there were two new pieces by David Parsons, a dancer with the Paul Taylor company, whose sense of daring theatricality fits in neatly with the Feld group`s wit and flair.

Parsons` ``The Envelope,`` which has seven black-hooded dancers romping in and out of spotlights to a taped mix of Rossini overtures, owes much to Taylor`s ``Three Epitaphs.`` But its quirky humor, centered on a white business envelope that is tossed about and passed about in a constantly changing chain of dancers, brings its own delightful goofiness to the party.

In ``Caught,`` which follows immediately, Parsons makes dazzling use of strobe light and the human eye`s persistence of vision to create a virtuoso solo of stunning images for a male dancer, who in this instance was the whippet Paul Vitali.

``Aurora I`` and ``Aurora II,`` set to Reich`s ``Music for 18 Musicians,`` is a triumph for Feld, his dancers and his key design

collaborators, Willa Kim (costumes) and Allen Lee Hughes (lights).

Both parts are performed primarily on a sharply angled ramp that extends across the stage and on which the dancers clamber, slide, stretch and leap in wave after wave of precisely timed, incredibly complex patterns that perfectly match the intricacies of Reich`s music.

The costumes are basic gray sweatsuits, but each one is edged with bright rainbow bands, creating the explosion of heavenly color the title suggests and, in breathtaking moments, coming together in clumps of complementary colors. The superb lighting further sculpts these flickers of colorful motion, and the dancers, in the springy athletic grace with which they sure-footedly execute their rapid maneuvers, project a sense of freedom and release that is enormously exhilarating.

Feld himself came out with his dancers at the end of ``Aurora II`` on Tuesday to acknowledge the audience`s sustained applause. He--and they--had earned it. Bravo.

FELD BALLET

A program of dance consisting of ``The Envelope`` and ``Caught,``

choreographed by David Parsons, and ``Aurora I`` and ``Aurora II,`` by Eliot Feld. Opened Jan. 21 at the Goodman Theatre, 200 S. Columbus Dr., at Monroe Street, and plays again at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Length of performance: 2:15. Tickets are $18. Phone 443-3800.